Welcome to September

Well, I did it. Went to wander around Hampstead today in a celebration of newness that is quite surprising when you consider that I was at school in Hampstead for seven years.

First, to Fenton House, a National Trust property up a steep hill near Hampstead station, which has beautiful gardens you can look at for £1 and ancient apple varieties from their orchard for sale in cardboard boxes at the front. The scent of these apples was absolutely intoxicating. They smelled like fresh-pressed apple juice and cider, like the summer sun filtered through leaves into their flesh.

Then to the gorgeous Everyman cinema to see Moon. The cinema doesn't really count, because I've been there before, but I haven't been to *that screen* before, so maybe it counts anyway? But if you haven't been to the Everyman, go - they serve food and drinks at little tables to eat while you're watching the movie, and if you have someone to snuggle up with there are sofas for you to do it on too. Or if you just like sofas. Also Moon is proper old-fashioned ideas-based, thoughtful, absorbing sci-fi.

Finally, a little treat for the way home, from a patisserie I used to pass by all the time when I was going to school but never went into:

And now I'm done. Well, there will be some posts reflecting on what I've learned this month. But I can say this: while I don't want to carry on seeking new places at quite such a pace (for one thing, I've missed going to some old favourite places), I don't want to give up. So I think I am going to commit (or commit to try) to go to a new place *twice a week* from now on. Which is a lot, really, as an ongoing committment. But I've loved this so much.

I must go to bed quite soon, but as a final thought, here's something I was reflecting on today.

We live in a world created for us by the industrial revolution and the Victorians. The industrial revolution meant that most of us were no longer working in the glorious (alright, often rainy and cold) outdoors anymore but in clattering factories or offices. The Victorians brought us the suburbs and the idea of the commute. Buy a house in the suburbs with a little garden, travel from it every day to your office and back.

But the Victorians also understood that man cannot live by home-and-office alone. Many other innovations in our society date from their time: public parks, municipal baths, libraries, cafes and restaurants, public museums, galleries and even public benches. They understood that these spaces are necessary, to provide us with the variety and sense of interest in things outside ourselves that we no longer get naturally from the changing seasons of the agricultural year.

At the start of August I thought that my problem was that, as a writer, I could too easily spend whole days indoors, never going anywhere. But now I think that it's not much of a solution even to go into an office every day and come home again. In the past 40 years or so, many of us have replaced the variety given by street-wandering, public-space-using, municipal-facility-visiting with the variety offered by the different screens in our homes: TV, computer, mobile phone. And much as I love my tech, it's not as good.

So I've come away from my little project with a deep sense of probably a very obvious point: it is extremely important to leave the house very regularly and go places that are not your office. We need to experience the changing world around us with our noses and our feet and our hands, not just our ears and eyes through a screen. I don't think there's been any very profound change in me over the past month except for this: I think I have had more moments of happiness. Which is pretty big, in a small way.

So probably everyone else in the world but me knew already about the importance of leaving the house. Anyway, I know it now. Happy September :-)

Sigh

The past few days I've been mentally composing the blog posts I might write when August is over, maybe summing up the project, picking my best-of and worst-of lists. And until today, the worst-of list was topped by The Warrington. But today hit a new low.

I went for a wander around Camden Town. Which is something of a pit on a Sunday, but in a fascinating way if you're willing to be fascinated. There are so many sub-cultures represented in such a small space, from the juggling shop where I heard someone say "I live to skate; when I skate it's like the world disappears" to the goth/vampire stalls where I saw a girl with amazingly intricate hair curls pasted to her head and face with gel. (I did take some pictures but my mobile phone is currently refusing to sync with my computer; when I sort it out I'll post them.) And there was a shop with a giant mirrored Buddha in the front window, amazing.

So I was feeling strangely peaceful surfing through this world of other people's interests and passions, when I stopped into a cookware store. Where the woman behind the counter decided to tell me what she thought was wrong with my body, and that *she had the miracle solution*. So I told her she was being offensive to me, put down the items I was planning to purchase, and left. As a warning to others, therefore, I would advise against going to the Reject Pot Shop in Chalk Farm, unless you enjoy that sort of commentary from strangers.

Sigh. This sort of thing is quite shocking, in a way. I remember being really horrified when an Asian friend told me about the casual insults thrown at him on the street because of his ethnicity. And Athena Stevens has a great post about how people try to *heal her* in Starbucks. Who *are* these crackpots and wankers? What is going on in their brains?

The good news, I suppose, is that only a very small minority of people in the world are this kind of tosser. Got into a lovely chat on the way home with an Italian and a German student, both of them trying to communicate with each other in broken English, not getting much further than 'you like pizza?' but both going at it with much goodwill.

Why do we go back again and again to the same places? Because we know we'll have a good time there, we know it's safe. New places and new people are often something of a gamble. But the truth is the gamble very rarely backfires horribly; most people are full of goodwill. Last day of August tomorrow, and I'm not even looking forward to all this being over. It's been enriching.

A travelling day

Spent most of today in a car on the way from Seaham back to London but... managed to stop off at The Blake Head, a very gorgeous vegetarian cafe/bookshop in York on the way home. Their risotto cakes are excellent, the cafe is very sunny and clearly popular. Here's my mum going in:

If I hadn't been travelling for nine hours today, I'd try to write something fascinating, reflecting on the meaning of a project that makes me seek out newness.

It might be about the uses of the old and the new. How new things are exciting but old things are comforting. New things offer the promise of improvement, but sometimes we only know how much we'll miss the old things when they're gone. How having too many new things leaves us exhausted and overstimulated, while having too many old things leaves us dull and bored and grey. How sometimes I feel impatient that the future I hoped for hasn't yet arrived, and sometimes I feel appalled at how much has already been lost from the past. I might talk about how difficult it is to achieve balance in life, finding room for both old things and new things.

But, I'm tired. So instead, here is an advert from a magazine directed at Very Orthodox Jews in northwest London. I promise it's genuine.

Edit, Thursday 27 August 11.23pm

Because a couple of people have now said to me "eh? Krefttik? I don't get it!" I feel I ought to explain what was so obviously hilarious to me about this ad. 1) Who on earth calls a food product Krefttik? It sounds like something you should be using to regrout your bathroom. 2) *What is it*? We know what it's not! But... so many options are left. I think it is a fish omelette. Any other ideas? Google is of no help in the Krefttik Quest. Clearly I have to go to Kol Tuv and find some.

Tired and emotional

I find it hard to throw things out. Other people love it - they gaily chuck stuff into the bin and then revel in all the beautiful space around them. Me, I find it hard. I don't mean like, throwing out crisp packets. But things that have meant something to me. Or might have meant something to me. Or if I can't really remember whether they meant something to me or not, but who knows, maybe they did! Anyway, today has been a throwing-out day, so it's been hard. I did go to a new place - it was the new promenade and bay at Seaham Harbour. Here is the bay in the evening:

But because I'm really a bit too tired and emotional to write much more, here instead are some images from late-80s copies of Just 17 and Smash Hits. Michael Jackson, Christian Bale and Philip Schofield, as they used to be.

 

North to the Future (or in this case, to the past)

I am in Seaham, County Durham, for the first time in 14 years. It is peculiar. I feel like I'm in 1991.

To explain more fully. In 1988 my parents bought a little two-up, two-down miner's cottage in Seaham, at that time, one of the most depressed areas of the UK. My dad has links to the area; he and his mother were evacuated here during the war and she remained good friends with people around here all her life. She used to enjoy coming up for visits to her old friends. I spent pretty much every summer here between the ages of 13 and 19, and then stopped coming. (Got too old to want to spend summers with my parents, really...)

But now my parents want me to clear out the relics of my childhood that are still here. It is very very odd to be here. The house is full of old furniture from my parents' house, sofas from my grandma's house, my old schoolwork, books I read as a child... there's a Proustian madeleine everywhere I turn, essentially.

Anyway, more of this tomorrow. On the way up, my mum and I stopped first at Boundary Mills discount clothing outlet which was marvellously full of old ladies looking for polyester mother-of-the-bride trouser-suits and also some awesome hats:

For dinner, we went to what is apparently the best vegetarian restaurant in the UK, The Waiting Room in Stockton-on-Tees. It is very quirky, with an incredibly peaceful atmosphere, old schoolroom furniture, and cute waitresses with good hats:

Also, the food was pretty nice.

Now, I have driven about 300 miles today, and had my senses assailed by objects from my past. I think it's time for bed. As a final word: last Tuesday I went to hear the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain at the Proms. If you haven't listened to the concert yet, do it before it vanishes from the website, cos it was lovely.